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Weeks of searching, more weeks of life on Stacy, and Zuko still hadn't found who he was looking for.

He was getting plenty sick of tunnel-crawling, too, and closer to a Punishment than was probably smart. And he hated to think of how much time "missions" were going to take away from his search . . . but whether he lacked time or not, he still needed to train.

The scarred prince ran through his katas in the Sensoriums, a breeze cooling the sweat on his back and blowing away the heat from his flames as he practiced in an open-air dojo. They were basic katas. His uncle would have been proud -

Except, no. He really wouldn't. Zuko faltered in his stance, remembering the last time he'd seen his uncle - the dim prison, the quiet disapproval in his voice, and Zuko's fireblast went wide as he stumbled.

Shit. At least nobody was there to see, right . . .?

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"Yeah, but while you're cooling on your heels, you can chill just a little bit. Pun possibly intended, what with the fire thing," Kon says with a grin. "Nothin' wrong with a well-timed shenanigan or two to cut the tension. Leaves you all spry and well-balanced for the hero parts."

"No."

Kon scratches his chin.

"I can see you're going to be a very difficult case for my fun facilitation engineering skills," Kon says, mock seriously.

"I don't do fun."

It might be the wrong thing to say to someone like Kon - who already reminds Zuko WAY too much of an even MORE annoying Aang - but dammit, he DOESN'T do fun! There's too much stuff to do.

Here's the question of the hour.

"Why not?"

"I can't have fun when things need to be fixed. It would be a waste of time."

"You can't do everything all the time, 24 hours a day. I mean, until the tech heads bust open the ship--and they are close, at least--we're kinda sitting on our heels."

He pauses.

"Besides, since when has fun been a waste of time? That's the great thing about it--you can squeeze it in anywhere."

"I don't enjoy sitting around doing nothing when peoples' lives are at stake. My father is going to take over the world if I don't get the Avatar back in time, and he's going to start by burning down an entire kingdom. I can't sit around and enjoy myself knowing that."

"I gotta go back home and save the world, too--but people are pulled from different times. People are from my future. So if, to them, I won, and the world was still standing, obviously it means we all get put back at the times we left."

"There's no one from my future here."

Apart from Mai, who's not from far enough in the future to know that they win.

"That's not the point. The point is that if the future didn't get wrecked for those people, it must mean at the end of all this, I'm gonna get back to where and when I was. And if I can get back to there, probably everyone will get put back right where and when they were."

Duh, Zuko. Don't you know anything about time travel?

No.

". . . I'm going to go back to training now."

"That's how time travel always works," Kon explains. "S'why I'm trying to have a good time here when I can."

Clearly, this means he's an idiot with no sense of when's a good time.

Zuko is too busy to hear you, Kon. Yeah, busy, taking his stance, doing his breathing, gathering his chi -

He speaks up at the worst possible moment. He maybe did that on purpose.

"So is the fire powered by the kung fu?"

"If kung fu is your word for chi, then yes. If not, no."

"It looked kung fu powered."

"As opposed to being powered by what?"

"I dunno. Radiation? Alien ray beams? There's a lot of stuff that can power stuff."

"Well it's not any of those things, it's my breath."

DUR, Kon!

"See, and all I can do is freeze stuff with mine."

A pause.

"Well, I'll get the super-breath eventually, at least. Kal's got it so it means I will."

Normally Zuko would ask if he was a waterbender.

But all these people have crazy powers. Zuko can't even begin to get a handle on that.

"Great."

This is where he should politely ask about Kon's powers, but - frankly, it sounds like he has too many.

"That's okay, though, 'cause I'm still getting the hang of the X-Ray vision. Not a fun power to have accidentally kick in unless it does it when watching an all-girls volleyball match..."

"What vision?"

"X-rays are sort of...beams that let you see through things. The X-ray vision doesn't actually work by shooting the beams--that's kind of a misname--but it's the same effect. You can see through stuff."

A pause.

"Like clothes. That's, uh, not one of its more practical applications though."

Another pause, and he admits, "Just one of the more fun ones."

The wall between the girl's and boy's locker rooms at Smallville High is oh-so-thin and not lined with lead at all...